Power corrupts

I mentioned last week that the Australian city of Wollongong has a rather, ahem, unique method by which to be screwed by their town planners. In fact, a fairly direct method -- one obviously enjoyed by planner Beth Morgan (right).

Turns out that unlimited power over other people's plans tends to corrupt those who wield it: the entire City of Wollongong planning department and the Labor Party hacks in charge of the department all seem to have had their own scams going on involving kickbacks, political donations and sexual favours in return for approval for development applications.  It's  a complicated story that could easily happen anywhere (and undoubtedly does), and to help you follow the whole tangled trail, The Daily Grind has produced a PDF graphic of it all.

Moral of the story: when you force the productive to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then the unproductive tend to seek the unearned.